For many fans Sandman is the point where Harry Nilsson’s ornery, unpredictable creativity descended into carelessness, but its flaws actually conceal some of Nilsson’s greatest work. The wear and tear on his voice is immediately evident on “I’ll Take a Tango,” in which the singer decries his own industry with a hoarse-but-groovy rumba: “You can go down the hole / With your sweet rock and roll / I'll take a tango.” In a clever Nilssonian twist, the author chooses to bear his creative frustrations in his songwriting, thereby making thin the line between lack-of-inspiration-as-subject and flat-out lack of inspiration. This tension culminates in “How To Write a Song,” which functions both as a parody of the songwriting process, and a painfully authentic picture of an artist at odds with his craft. The instances of insipidity and sabotage are tempered by “The Ivy Covered Walls,” a delicate a cappella piece that echoes Nilsson Sings Newman, and “Something True,” a Lennonesque ballad that contains the revealing line: “Sometimes when you’re down and out, you leave the truth behind.”